Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
For Pierre Brochant and his friends, Wednesday is “Idiots' Day”. The idea is simple: each person has to bring along an idiot. The one who brings the most spectacular idiot wins the prize. Tonight, Brochant is ecstatic. He has found a gem. The ultimate idiot, “A world champion idiot!”. What Brochant doesn’t know is that Pignon is a real jinx, a past master in the art of bringing on catastrophes...
Le Dîner de Cons is a masterclass in French farce — the plot is a beautifully constructed chain of escalating catastrophes, with each new complication arising organically from the last. The writing (Veber adapting his own stage play) is razor-sharp and the comedic timing is impeccable. Thierry Lhermitte and Jacques Villeret are perfectly matched, with Villeret's Pignon being one of the great comic creations of 1990s French cinema. As a film adaptation of a stage play, the cinematography is functional and unremarkable — mostly interior shots with little visual ambition. The premise of mocking 'idiots' for sport has a clever moral inversion built in, though the theatrical origins keep it from feeling wholly cinematic or wildly novel. The ending provides satisfying comic resolution but doesn't fully transcend the theatrical framework it emerged from.